For a fighter who’s competed on some of the sport’s biggest stages, Roy Nelson knew The Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale was his best chance to impress viewers of the UFC’s reality series.

Nelson, a former IFL heavyweight champion who was the favorite to win “TUF 10,” did just on Saturday with a first-round knockout of fellow finalist Brendan Schaub.

Nelson saved his best performance for last, and he said the roar of a crowd and the bright lights of a nationally televised live event were big reasons why.

“TUF 10″ debuted in September on Spike TV, and the series scored record ratings largely because of the season’s diverse cast. While the show featured three former UFC fighters and notable Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson, it was from the pool of four NFL vets that Nelson’s opponent would emerge.

Both Nelson and Schaub navigated through the 16-man field, though the on-show performances were hit or miss. They sometimes dazzled; sometimes they fizzled. But Nelson knew he had to overcome the sometimes-drab first rounds of the tournament to get to the one that mattered.

“When you fight in front of a crowd, it’s a way bigger difference than actually fighting in front of about 22 people,” Nelson said. “When you’re fighting in the house, it’s actually kind of more of a sparring match. When you’re fighting in front of a crowd, you feel the roar. You feel the pump. You’re going to go out there and give it 120 percent, especially in front of a live crowd. That’s the entertainment value. When you’re in the house, because it’s a tournament format, you have to just get the [wins] to get where we are today.”

On Saturday, at The Pearl at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, Nelson fought in front of an estimated crowd of 1,400 – far fewer, for example, than the 10,000 who watched him clash with Andrei Arlovski at “EliteXC: Heat” last year. Even some of the shows in his former home, the IFL, drew substantially bigger crowds. But with the small venue at its loudest for the Nelson vs. Schaub main event, and with millions of fans watching the event live around the globe, Nelson knew he could go for broke.

With no future rounds of the competition, Nelson didn’t have to preserve or conserve. He didn’t have to worry about a next fight. He simply fed off the crowd and put everything he had into the Schaub matchup.

“It’s pretty tough (on the show) because you have to worry about like, ‘Am I going to get hurt?'” Nelson said. “You’re afraid to throw a punch too hard because you’re afraid you might break your hand because you don’t have recovery time. It really sucks.

“For example, I feel bad for (semifinalist) Marcus (Jones) because Marcus fought, I think, three times in a week and a half. Myself, I had a little more time – maybe a week and a half per fight. You just have to look at it as a hard sparring match when you’re actually in the house. … It’s not setup for you to give it your all and take chances early on.”

While his globular build has proven deceiving, and though Nelson has learned to use his portly build to his advantage with his underrated ground game, Schaub presented him problems. Although he was a member of the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad and competed in the Arena Football League, Schaub, a lifelong martial artist, has always considered himself a fighter first and foremost. And early in his finale fight, Schaub took control with effective and quick striking with an obvious reach advantage. Nelson briefly got the fight to the ground, but when Schaub got back to his feet, he seemed to reclaim the momentum.

Nelson, though, said it was all part of the plan.

“I was just trying to gauge his range,” Nelson told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) after the fight. “He has some God-awful reach. But the thing is, I knew when I was getting hit with his jab, now I’ve got to really step in. The only way I knew that he was going to hurt me was with his right hand, but he had to step in, too. I knew if he steps in when he throws his too, then I’m going to be able to hit him with my two. Just two forces meeting. One’s going to land; the other one’s not.”

And Nelson landed – with a big overhand right that tagged Schaub behind the left ear and sent him crashing to the mat at the 3:45 mark of the first round.

“I landed three right hands that just barely just tipped his chin, and the last one I just stepped in, and that was the one that put him to the floor,” Nelson said.

The fight game plan wasn’t the only strategy that worked. While no doubt one of the sport’s better heavyweights, likely worthy of a top-20 ranking, Nelson knew he needed to build his name with casual fight fans. With the IFL’s limited exposure and his back-to-back losses before coming on “TUF 10,” Nelson saw a golden opportunity to establish himself.

And he learned from some other “TUF” vets that the reality show can do just that.

“I think I took the hardest road,” Nelson said. “After talking to Forrest (Griffin) and Rashad (Evans), they always say [“TUF”] is the hardest road to become the champion. I wanted to challenge myself, and that’s the reason I jumped into the house. Plus, it was a little more of a business decision where it’s like fighting five times in front of a live crowd for the UFC. So it’s a marketing decision.

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